I'm the founder of the blog Capital Gains and Games. I moved to DC after getting a graduate degree in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley and have been involved with the federal budget and congressional budget process throughout my entire career. In addition to being one of the few people who has served on the staffs of the House and Senate Budget Committees, I'm the author of The Guide to the Federal Budget, which was published annually from 1982 to 2000 and was one of the most-assigned texts on the topic. I founded and edited Federal Budget Report, a newsletter that was published for almost two decades. I've also written weekly columns on the budget for NationalJournal.com and Roll Call. I'm currently an executive vice president at Qorvis MSLGROUP, where I work closely with financial services clients. I frequently speak on federal taxes and spending.

Next Year's Ugly Budget Debate: The Extreme GOP Mess

From a budget perspective it really won’t really make much difference which political party controls the House and Senate nextnext year.

Unless something very unexpected happens, the chances of a breakthrough of any kind when it comes to federal spending and revenues and the deficit and debt are so small that expectations need to be lowered now so hopes don’t grow and are dashed later.

Regardless of the election results, the next two years are more likely to produce more of the same type of limited or nonexistent budget agreements we’ve had the past decade than anything new or substantial.

What happens if the Senate goes Republican this November while the House stays under GOP control?

The most obvious result is that it will be up to congressional Republicans to produce a budget resolution, something that sounds relatively easy (especially compared to a GOP-majority in the House having to compromise with Senate Democrats), but definitely won’t be.

Why? House Republicans will be far more conservative than their Senate counterparts and will push spending cuts and other changes that Senate Republicans will have a hard time supporting.

This will especially be the case the next two years because GOP control of the Senate will be up for grabs in the 2016 election when it will have to defend 24 of the 34 seats that will be contested that year. Yes, the 2016 election will be 18 or so months away, but it will already be well underway by the time the budget begins to be considered.

In other words, it will be difficult for the new Senate Republican leadership to gather even the simple majority needed to pass a budget resolution (budget resolutions can’t be filibustered and so don’t need a supermajority to be adopted) than most people anyone currently are anticipating.

This particularly will be the case if the House GOP majority is feeling its political oats after the 2014 election, pushes a very conservative agenda in its budget resolution and then takes a hard line with its Senate colleagues. One of the best-known budget secrets of the past few years has been that many Republican senators have not been all that unhappy that they didn’t have to vote on a budget agreement that included the House-passed politically toxic spending cuts the House wanted.

That means that the big budget-related fight next year in a GOP-controlled Congress will be between House and Senate Republicans rather than Republicans and Democrats or Congress and the White House. The GOP will first have to have to decide what’s worse for its political future. Will it be more important for the new Republican congressional majority to adopt a budget resolution and show it can govern even if that means abandoning some of its most extreme positions to do it, or will it be better not to compromise even if it means no budget resolution gets adopted?

Answering that question won’t be the end. If governing is the answer, House and Senate Republicans will then actually have to gather the votes to pass a budget resolution, something that has proven to be extremely illusive the past few years whenever compromises of any kind on spending and taxes have been needed. With House Democrats very unlikely to do what they have done a number of times in the past by supplying the votes on budget issues when Republicans were unable or unwilling to do so, the House GOP leadership won’t be able to lose more than about 20 votes from their own caucus and still pass a budget resolution.

It’s possible, therefore, that a Republican-controlled House and Senate will have at least as much trouble passing a budget resolution as the GOP-led House and Democratic-majority Senate have had the past few years.

But what if they don’t have a problem? What if House Republicans agree that compromising so a budget resolution can be adopted is worth the effort even if it means not getting everything they want?

The answer is that the House and Senate will then likely move to a stage in the budget debate that politically will be even tougher: reconciliation.

Reconciliation is the process Congress may use to enforce the mandatory spending and tax changes assumed in a budget resolution conference report. Unlike the budget resolution, a reconciliation bill includes actual spending and taxing changes and for that reason alone is almost always difficult to pass.

It will be more difficult than usual next year for one of two reasons. If reconciliation includes the reductions in Medicare and Medicaid some House Republicans may insist on, Senate Republicans up for reelection in 2016 may not have the testicular fortitude to go on record in favor of the cuts. If the budget resolution does not assume and, therefore, reconciliation does not include the Medicare changes, the budget may not do enough to get tea party support and the GOP leadership may not have even the simple majority needed to pass the bill.

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